Developer demands The Pirate Bay does not remove a torrent

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The Pirate Bay (TPB) must receive a lot of e-mail. I suspect most of it is takedown requests, replies from lawyers giving advice on what to do about the latest lawsuit, and probably the odd thank you from users.

This week TPB got a very different e-mail, though. It was a “Notice of Ridiculous Activity” from a software developer who had found one of its apps cracked and listed as a torrent on TPB.

The app in question is called Memories developed by Coding Robots. Memories is marketed as the easiest way to keep a journal on your Mac. It costs $29.99 to buy after you’ve enjoyed a 30-day free trial. That of course didn’t stop someone cracking the software and making it available for free as a torrent.

Dmitry Chestnykh, founder of Coding Robots, noticed the cracked torrent and decided to download it to see what had been done. After using it he was upset, not because the cracked version was available, but because the cracker (named Minamoto) had done such a bad job of cracking it.

The image below gives you the full e-mail sent to TPB (thanks Reddit). It appears Minamoto was very lazy in his crack to the point that he used a Windows program to validate the software. The How-to section is also “incomprehensible”.

The best section of the e-mail has to be this, though:

I demand that you don’t remove this torrent, so that people can laugh at Minamoto and CORE skills. However, I also demand the[sic] better crack to be made, so that it doesn’t cripple the user experience of my beautiful program.

This is a guy who is clearly very proud of his software and doesn’t want anyone using it in such a poor state. He isn’t bothered about it being cracked and available for free, just that people might be using this version and getting a bad impression of the software Coding Robots produces.

It’s a valid point. There are people out there who download pirate versions of software to try them out before deciding to buy a legitimate copy. If your cracked version runs poorly, it doesn’t bode well for securing a sale in the future.

What Coding Robots might want to consider doing is extending the free trial they offer to 90 days, and also supplying their own torrents to TPB with either a long trial or some functionality turned off. At least then downloaders would be getting a true experience of using the software.

Speak Your Mind

baragla

In my experience the people who download cracked software are usually young and cannot afford it. However, the experience gained with said software will translate into purchase later in life, either for business or personal uses.
If I were a software producer, I would surreptitiously make sure that cracked versions of my products exist and that they retain full functionality, with only minor annoyances.

Rob

Codingrobots.com? I have to see that page.

dave

I’ve pirated every copy of Windows from 98SE through XP, necessitating piracy of dozens of commercial applications as well. I ended up purchasing a number of Windows applications when I started using them for commercial purposes. If I hadn’t gained proficiency in these various applications, I wouldn’t have used them, nor would I have trained other people to use them.

There’s another lesson to be learned, though: With Vista, I felt there was enough of a threat of Microsoft killing pirated versions that I abandoned Windows – along with the all of the applications I had purchased over the years – in favor of Linux.

If it’s easier for me to use a cheap or free version than your commercial version, you don’t have a chance at winning my business. Ever. If you lock it down so bad that I can’t become proficient with your product before being forced to pay for it, I’m just going to support your competition.